Unlike
other organisms, humans acquire a rich body of information from others by
teaching, imitation, and other forms of social learning, and this culturally
transmitted information strongly influences human behavior. Culture is an
essential part of the human adaptation, and as much a part of human biology
as bipedal locomotion or thick enamel on our molars. My research is focused
on the evolutionary psychology of the mechanisms that give rise to and shape
human culture, and how these mechanisms interact with population dynamic processes
to shape human cultural variation. I have done much of this work in collaboration
with Peter
J. Richerson.

Our 2005 book entitled
Not by Genes Alone: How culture transformed human evolution gives a nonmathematical
treatment of this work, and is now available from the University of Chicago
Press. Read
Chapter 1. Here is an NPR interview with a brief account of our ideas
about cultural evolution (Mpeg3)

Richard McElreath and
I have a book entitled Mathematical Models of Social Evolution: A guide
for the perplexed available from University of Chicago Press. Table
of Contents